Home / Authors / Jay Griffiths

Jay Griffiths

Jay Griffiths Quotes

Writer

Jay Griffiths is a British writer born in 1965. Her works cover a wide range of topics, including nature, culture, travel, and gender. Griffiths is known for her in-depth research and unique narrative style, often focusing on marginalized and overlooked groups.

Filter quotes by topic

All Humans Clock Individual Language Measurement People Silence Animal Calibration Children

Famous Jay Griffiths Quotes

“Cultures have long heard wisdom in non-human voices: Apollo, god of music, medicine and knowledge, came to Delphi in the form of a dolphin. But dolphins, which fill the oceans with blipping and chirping, and whales, which mew and caw in ultramarine jazz - a true rhapsody in blue - are hunted to the edge of silence.”

Humans Long Form Culture Voice Silence Heard Ocean Blue Medicine Jazz Edges Apollo Whales Dolphins Hunted Human Voice Delphi

Author:Jay Griffiths

“What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakeable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary.”

Earth Spirit Water Fire Air Pure Waste Ice Borrowed Constituents Wildness Elementals Unforgettable Quintessence Ice Water

Book:Wild: An Elemental Journey

Source: Wild: An Elemental Journey

“A wild creature is not subject to any will except its own”

Subjects Creatures Wild Creatures

Author:Jay Griffiths

“All humans are essentially wild creatures and hate confinement. We need what is wild, and we thrill to it, our wildness bubbling over with an anarchic joie de vivre. We glint when the wild light shines. The more suffocatingly enclosed we are - tamed by television, controlled by mortgages and bureaucracy - the louder our wild genes scream in aggression, anger and depression.”

Needs Humans Light Hate Television Creatures Shining Controlled Scream Genes Aggression Thrill Bureaucracy Mortgage Wildness Confinement Tamed Joie De Vivre Wild Creatures

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Being adequately informed is a democratic duty, just as the vote is a democratic right. A misinformed electorate, voting without knowledge, is not a true democracy.”

Democracy Duty Vote Democratic Voting Electorate Democratic Country True Democracy

Author:Jay Griffiths

“We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators but for thunder and mud.”

Born Animal Blood Skins Mud Thunder Pavement Escalators

Book:Savage Grace: A Journey in Wildness

Source: Savage Grace: A Journey in Wildness

“A functional media is as important to democratic freedom as voting.”

Important Media Democratic Voting

Author:Jay Griffiths

“As a writer you have a duty to be a messenger.”

Duty Messengers

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Children say they are unhappy in every language they have. They say it in silence, and they say it in riots.”

Children Language Silence Unhappy Riot

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Clock measurement is not time itself. In fact, so opposed are they that one could argue the clock is not a synonym, but the opposite of time.”

Facts Opposites Arguing Clock Measurement Synonym

Author:Jay Griffiths

“I don't write quickly, and I don't want to.”

Author:Jay Griffiths

“If people can't acknowledge the wisdom of indigenous cultures, then that's their loss.”

People Ifs Culture Loss Acknowledge Indigenous Indigenous Culture

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Just because Galileo was a heretic doesn't make every heretic a Galileo.”

Author:Jay Griffiths

“The losses of the natural world are our loss, their silence silences something within the human mind.”

World Mind Humans Natural Loss Silence Human Mind Natural World

Author:Jay Griffiths

“The silencing of the rainforests is a double deforestation, not only of trees but a deforestation of the mind's music, medicine and knowledge.”

Mind Tree Medicine Deforestation Rainforest Silencing

Author:Jay Griffiths

“All definitions of wilderness that exclude people seem to me to be false. African 'wilderness' areas are racist because indigenous people are being cleared out of them so white people can go on holiday there.”

People Seems White Goes On Areas Definitions Holiday Racist Wilderness Indigenous Indigenous People

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Clearly, many branches of science need an exquisite precision of timekeeping and the infinitesimal decimals of calibration, so space launches, for example, are not scheduled for leap-second dates. But society as a whole neither needs that obsessive time measurement nor is well served by it.”

Needs Wells Whole Space Example Branches Leap Exquisite Measurement Precision Obsessive Decimals Calibration

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Human language is lit with animal life: we play cats-cradle or have hare-brained ideas; we speak of badgering, or outfoxing someone; to squirrel something away and to ferret it out.”

Humans Ideas Play Speak Language Animal Cat Lit Cradle Squirrels Hares Animal Life Human Language Cats Cradle Ferrets

Author:Jay Griffiths

“I'm not against entertainment: if someone wants to read nonsense-mongers, let them, but I resent the appearance of parity between two articles on an issue as serious as climate change when one article is actually gibberish masked in pseudoscience and the other is well informed and accurate.”

Ifs Want Wells Two Issues Serious Climate Climate Change Entertainment Appearance Nonsense Articles Accurate Resent Pseudoscience Parity

Author:Jay Griffiths

“In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.”

World Believe Tradition Seeds Buddhist Ancestor Syllables Aboriginal

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Language is wild - you can't fence it or tell it what to do - and it's the same with people. Even under the worst excesses of Stalinism or consumerism, the human spirit will still express itself.”

People Humans Stills Spirit Language Worst Excess Consumerism Fence Human Spirit Stalinism

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Singing with others is an unmediated, shared experience as each person feels the same music reverberating in their individual bodies. Singing is part of our humanity; it is embodied empathy.”

Feels Persons Body Humanity Individual Empathy Singing Shared Experiences

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Society understands the architecture of academia and knows there are relevant qualifications in different fields, and the media accepts the idea of specialisations and accords greater respect to those with greater expertise. With one exception: climate science.”

Knows Ideas Different Accepting Greater Media Fields Climate Architecture Exception Relevant Accord Expertise Academia Qualifications

Author:Jay Griffiths

“The clock, for all its precision in measurement, is a blunt instrument for the psyche and for society. Schedules can replace sensitivity to the mood of a moment, clock time can ride roughshod over the emotions of individuals.”

Moments Individual Emotion Instruments Mood Clock Schedules Sensitivity Measurement Precision Blunt

Author:Jay Griffiths

“The woods are a place where children can go to think. Children gravitate towards these spaces. When I was a child it was nothing more than a scrubby little overhang under a rhododendron bush, but it was incredibly important to me.”

Thinking Children Littles Important Space Woods

Author:Jay Griffiths

“Time is found in the calibration of the individual to the timing of a collective endeavour, the social grace that less clock-bound societies must practise.”

Found Individual Social Grace Bounds Clock Collectives Timing Endeavour Practise Social Graces Calibration

Author:Jay Griffiths

About the Author

Born: 1965
Known for: Writer
Quotes: 26

Related Topics

Humans Clock Individual Language Measurement People Silence Animal Calibration Children

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Savage Grace: A Journey in WildnessRelated source material

Wild: An Elemental JourneyRelated source material

Similar Authors

Andy GeigerBrowse related quotes
AntiphonBrowse related quotes
Warwick ThorntonBrowse related quotes
Rebecca AdamsonBrowse related quotes
Jackie HugginsBrowse related quotes
Matthias B. TallmadgeBrowse related quotes
Galarrwuy YunupinguBrowse related quotes
Malcolm FraserBrowse related quotes
Tania MajorBrowse related quotes
Jane GoodallBrowse related quotes